Steve Hargadon Shares Interview with Will Richardson

As we continue to discuss the use of Web 2.0/Read/Write Web, there are a few main topics that should be addressed with students that are growing up and will work in a global economy. Students need to be taught at least how to;

~ Access Information

~ Determine Trusted Resources and Internet Sites

~ Collaborate/Network via the net

~ See the limitless value in what can be learned using the Web

Steve Hargadon was interested enough to respond to my last blog where I referenced his interview with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach . He had recently interviewed Will Richardson. Will was the “teacher” at last summer’s “High School’s New Face” that ignited a team here at Iroquois to see the value of blogs, wikis and podcasting as an instructional tool. I thoroughly enjoyed the interview and it has addressed a major question I am confronted with when asked, “So what’s the big deal about blogging and why do it?”

Why Blog with students?

First, blogging gives students a way to publish to a larger audience than the classroom. These opportunities can be a powerful motivator and an effective way for students to learn given the feedback they may get from other readers of their blog.

Second, gives students the opportunity to be a part of a “community” that network with each other discovering new tools and connect to people of similar thoughts and passions. Again, this has the potential to motivate students to be a part of this collaboration, to learn from each other and to “teach others” at times.

Will Richardson was a Journalism major prior to becoming a teacher. He was therefore immediately drawn to the internet for obvious reasons and integrated the use of the internet in his instruction. When he first saw a blog he became a ‘blogger’ and “got hooked”. The key motivation was that he could “publish” immediately have people read his work. He then felt that the potential was limitless for his journalism students. Will was then prompted to find other educators using blogs. At the time there were only 4 or 5 people using blogs actively. The community built itself but in 2003/2004 something began to happen: Will learned he was one of the first teachers using blogging for instruction. As people began to see how blogging impacted the media, the media began to look at what was out there for blogging in education. Will received some immediate publicity and the conversations “exploded”. At that point there were 20 or 30 people he was communicating with and that it was something that was not possible with face to face communication. There was no one in his school using blog. Blogging was then viewed as professional development.

To write a blog and realize that there are people around the world reading your work is “transformational”. People around the world have much to offer each other. Blogging is a way to bring people and ideas together that may never have been brought together.

Blogging is becoming a way for students to develop reading skills, critical thinking and writing in a way to attract, sustain and connect with audiences.

When Will was asked if a teacher is interested in blogging, and where should they start, his response was interesting. You may think he would say, “just start blogging”. His answer was to “just start reading blogs”. Whether it be blogs that address your hobbies such as knitting or photography or academics…….read, comment and observe the interaction.

Will is now advocating that teaching folks RSS (Real Simple Syndication) that enables you to easily keep track of blogs as a first step before actually teaching about Blogs and Wikis. This helps you to read and follow blogs you’re interested in (likened to having an on-line subscription to a blog). The next step is to recognize the "connections" that blogging can provide to students.

There is so much to read now, Steve asked Will about how many blogs he reads/follows now. It can be overwhelming to keep up with the amount of blogs on the web. Will has now filtered down to reading about 20 blogs that he follows to make it meaningful as it relates to education. He now would like to expand the audience outside of education as a means of spreading the word.

Bloglines is one of the biggest RSS feeds used. It does tell Will that somewhere between 5 and 10,000 people read his blog regularly. As one that blogs and has added a Clustrmap to my blog, to see that there are people in China, Japan, Australia, Egypt, England and various other countries not to mention throughout the United States is just amazing to me. To think that people have visited my blog and read it provides an audience that I would never imagine. What attracted them to my blog probably varies: a tag line that interested them, the mention of my blog by another blogger, to use my blog posts as a means of learning about the instructional value of blogging.

Will Richardson cautions that while you should be looking for an audience, of “teachers” or readers, you can’t assume that people will read your blog. However, the 'audience' aspect is important because if our students are “clickable” (found on the Web by the click of a mouse), anyone that responds is a potential “teacher” to our students.

A major question is how do you make sure that students are safe on the internet and are protected from predators? Will responds as I have to parents- our students are already reachable/clickable on the web. It happens through MySpace and other social networks. We need to educate people how to use the social tools safely and appropriately. Blocking their access is not the answer as many districts are doing.

One of the most interesting was a question that Steve posed to Will that I could relate to: What position does the use of this technology from a school leader's perspective in dealing with how to make such substantive changes in how we teach? Will believes that if we don’t change schools and the typical paradigm, students will go elsewhere to learn. Perhaps even homeschooling or on-line schooling.......Students need to learn how to build their own learning communities, students need to learn how to be creative, how to find reliable sources, to be “clickable” to be more responsible for their own learning as just a few changes that need to be made. This will require allowing teachers to be more flexible in how they teach, how they explore professional development opportunities and how they can model for students.

If you are interested in hearing Steve’s interview with Will Richardson, you can find all of Steve Hargadon’s interviews/podcasts at:

http://edtechlive.wikispaces.com/Recordings+List